ETHOS

By Eric Augenbraun

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” -Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -Barack Obama at a San Fransisco fundraiser, April 6, 2008

Can’t you see the resemblance?

By now, you would have to be living under a rock not to have heard the media backlash over Obama’s recent comments at a San Fransisco fundraising rally in which he ascribed the embrace of religion, guns, and bigotry among small town whites to their “bitterness” over being screwed by American capitalism over the last 25 years. While the media, HRC, and Old Man McCain have blasted him for being ‘elitist’ and ‘condescending’, as a self described Marxist I was more struck by the eery similarity between Obama’s statements and Karl Marx’s now (in)famous materialist analysis of religion. Of course, Obama added the nuance that people turn to guns, too, out of bitterness – though I can think of reasons other than bitterness that people might own guns.

In keeping with their tradition of ad hominem attacks, Right wing hacks like Karl Rove and Glenn Beck have jumped all over his statements to link him to the “red specter” and, naturally, scare voters. “You know, it was almost Marxian in this they cling to their religion. I mean, it’s sort of like it’s the opiate of the masses,” Rove said on Fox News this week. Glenn Beck – who is about a millimeter to the left of David Duke on the political spectrum – had this to say on his show:

I hope it doesn’t matter to Barack. But he has heard the message of Jesus that shared prosperity is the thing to do. Hope, change, Marxism. This guy is a socialist and all you have to do is listen to his words.

After hearing all of this hype, I had to investigate for myself. Sadly, though, after looking over Obama’s record and re-reading my own piece on him, it is still pretty clear that the ‘neoliberal’ suit fits Barack better than the ‘Marxist’ one. Bummer.

The American flag under Chairman Obama…

So, what of this talk of Obama being elitist? When it comes from McCain and Clinton, it is little more than the pot calling the kettle black (no pun intended). The fact of the matter is that every politician who runs for or holds elected office in the corporate controlled two party system is an elitist. The two party system depends on keeping everyday, normal, non-elite voices out of power as such voices would likely pose a challenge to American capitalism. As hard as McCain and Hillary try to posture as the down-home man and woman of the people, at the end of the day their interests lie with the corporate power structure who write them the biggest campaign checks and have made them rich over the years. It has gotten to the point that now when I hear a pundit lambasting Obama for being an elitist I say to myself: “A politician being an elitist? Noooo, you don’t say! Now what about the Sun – it’s hot right?”

But still, I am not willing to let Obama off of the hook that easily. There is an important distinction to be made between the context in which Marx posited his analysis of religion and that in which Obama voiced his beliefs. Marx, as a social critic and philosopher, was interested in understanding the historical and material roots of religion. Like much of his work, Marx’s statement that religion is the “opium of the people” has been removed from its appropriate context and hoisted by opponents of Marxism as proof that Marx had nothing but contempt for religion. In fact, the opposite is true. Marx displayed a nuanced and sympathetic view of working people who embraced religion in response to the hopelessness and inequality that were inherent in class society. It was his contention that with the elimination of class society and exploitation, the material basis for religion would cease to exist. Religion – which has in many cases played a profoundly positive role in the liberation struggles of oppressed people – was not the problem. The problem was class society.

We should put aside for a moment that as a candidate for elected office – the highest office at that – Obama’s statements could be considered alienating and offensive not just to rural whites, but the millions of religious voters in this country. From a Marxist perspective, though, Obama’s statement does not seem too far off the mark. However, by running on an unmistakably neoliberal platform, an Obama presidency will likely see a continuation of the same material inequality to which he attributes religion, guns, and bigotry in the first place. Thus, the insightfulness of his commentary collides with the brick wall of his political agenda, planting it firmly on his shelf of platitudes – alongside ‘hope,’ ‘change,’ ‘Yes we can!,’ and the rest of them.